One ear swiveled toward her.
“You have never sounded like anything but a cat. Cats are clearly superior to dogs, and I don’t know what I was thinking. Please accept my abject apologies and forgive me.”
He snorted without turning. “You call that groveling?”
“Yes, and I’m sorry if it falls short of your high standards. Unless you’re planning to walk, I also call it the last thing I’m going to say before picking you up and stuffing you into the carrier.”
Her hands were actually touching his fur before he realized she was serious. “Oh, sure,” he muttered, tail scribing short, jerky arcs as he climbed into the case, “give a species opposable thumbs, and they evolve into bullies.”
Dean watched without speaking as she opened the door, set the cat carrier carefully down on a dry bit of pavement up near the building, and finally lifted her backpack out from under the tarp. She paused as if she was trying to think of something to say. She was wearing some kind of lip stuff that made her mouth look full and soft and…He leaned over and rolled down the window. “Do you need any help, then?”
He hadn’t intended to say it, but he just couldn’t stop himself; his grandfather’s training was stronger than justified anger, emotional betrayal, and the uncomfortable way the seat belt was cutting into his…lap.
An emphatic “Yes!” came out of the cat carrier, but Claire ignored it. “No, thank you.” She swallowed around the kind of lump in her throat that Keepers were not supposed to get. “You’d better get going if you’re driving all the way to Newfoundland.”
“It’s an island, Claire. I won’t be driving all the way.”
“You knew what I meant.” Her gloves suddenly took all her attention. “This is for your own good, Dean.”
“If you say so.”
It was as close to a snide comment as she’d ever heard him make.
For a moment Claire thought he wasn’t going to go, but the moment passed.
“Good-bye, Claire.” He wanted to say something wry and debonair so she’d know what she was losing, but the only thing that came to mind was a line from an old black-and-white movie, and he suspected that “You’ll never take me alive, copper!” didn’t exactly fit the situation. This was clearly the day his aunt had been referring to when she’d said, “Some day, you guys are going to wish you’d watched a couple of movies with more talking than hitting.” He settled for raising his hand in the classic whatever wave.
He left the window rolled down until he reached the highway. Just in case she called him back.
Claire stood and watched Dean back up and drive away, realizing she should have wiped his memory with something more possible—although at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything more possible than the two of them spending their lives together.
I did it for his own good.
It was colder than it should be, and the chill had nothing to do with standing in an empty parking lot beside a closed second-rate summer attraction while an early November wind stuffed icy fingers under her collar and threatened snow. She stared at the single set of tire tracks until she couldn’t feel her feet.
In the summer, Fantasy Land consisted of mazes and slides built into child-sized castles scattered along a path that twisted through the woods and paused every now and then at a fairy-tale tableau constructed of poured concrete and paint. In the summer, the fact it was a convenient place for the children to run off some excess energy before they were stuffed back in the car to fidget and complain for another hundred kilometers, lent the place a certain charm. In the winter, when nothing hid the damage caused by the same children who could disassemble an eight-hundred-dollar DVD player armed with nothing more than a sucker stick and a cheese sandwich, it was just depressing.
The Summons rose from the center of the Sleeping Beauty display.
Five concrete dwarfs, their paint peeling, stood around the bier that held the sleeping princess—or at least Claire assumed that’s what the bier had held. The princess and two of the dwarfs had been thoroughly gone over with a piece of pipe. Bits of broken concrete lay scattered around the clearing, and Sleeping Beauty’s head had been propped into a decidedly compromising position with one of the dwarfs.
“I’m guessing these guys are all named Grumpy,” Claire muttered, as she approached the bier. “None of them are smiling.”
Austin sat down in the shelter of a giant concrete mushroom and wrapped his tail around his toes. And ignored her.
Which was pretty much the response Claire expected. That dog comparison would likely haunt her for a while.
The hole itself was centered on the bier—no surprise since the vandalism had probably opened it. It was larger than mere vandalism could account for, though, and it had been seeping for some time. Unfortunately, the seepage wasn’t dissipating.
Which meant that something in the immediate area was absorbing it.
A quick search showed no wildlife, not even so much as a single pigeon although evidence of pigeons had been liberally splattered on all five dwarfs.
“I hope this isn’t going to be another one of those possessed squirrel sites. They’re always nuts.” She glanced over at the cat and, when he didn’t rise to the provocation, sighed. Great, my cat’s not even responding to bad jokes, Dean’s gone… Her attention elsewhere, she tripped over a piece of broken princess, barely catching herself on the shoulder of a stone dwarf. …and now I’ve twisted my ankle. How could this day possibly get any worse?
A small stone hand closed painfully around her wrist.
I had to ask.
Fortunately, the hands were more or less in proportion to the body, so although the grip pinched, it wasn’t difficult to break. Jerking free, Claire stepped away from the dwarf and felt something poke her in the back of the upper thigh.
It turned out to be a nose.
Her anatomical relief was short lived as this second dwarf made a grab for her knee, muttering, “Write on me, will you!”
He was pretty fast for concrete.
They all were.
“…rotten kids…”
“…ice cream on my hat…”
“…you want Happy, I’ll tell you what’ll make me happy, you little…”
“…gonna pay for those malt balls…”
“…I’ll hi your ho right up your…”
“Hey!” Claire danced away from the last dwarf and glared down at him. “Watch it, buster, you’re supposed to be a children’s display.”
Stone eyes narrowed. “Grind your bones to make my bread.”
“Oh, great…” She leaped off the concrete pad and onto scuffed grass. “…now they’re free-associating.”
The dwarfs came to the edge of the concrete but no farther.
Claire would have been a lot happier about that had they not been between her and the accident site. A quick jog around the perimeter proved she couldn’t outrun them and, as long as the site was open, they wouldn’t run down.
Secure in the knowledge that the Keeper couldn’t get past them, four of the dwarfs started a soccer game with Sleeping Beauty’s head while the fifth kept watch.
Two feints, a dodge, and an argument over whether it was entirely ethical to use chunks of dwarfs six and seven for goalposts, Claire realized she wasn’t going to get by without a plan. Or a distraction.
“Austin?”
“No.”
“I just wanted…”
“Tough. I’m not doing it.”
“Fine. Then what’ll distract five of the seven dwarfs?”
“A trademarked theme song?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You could sing the short version.”
“No.”
“You don’t think they’d be up to it?”
She sighed down at the cat. “Are you done?”